• Humans are best at (HABA) information retrieval using context and associations, machines are best at (MABA) information retrieval based on long lists and structured information.
• Humans are best at creative and adaptive tasks, machines are best at precise and repetitive tasks.

The lists change as machine capabilities change, but they are helpful when assessing a complex system and looking for places where machine automation can help, such as scanning barcodes at the grocery store instead of typing in prices, and where they introduce new problems, such as airplane pilots having difficulty staying awake during long flights because so many tasks have been automated. So how does this apply to my toothbrush?

The toothbrush takes care of the aspects of brushing my teeth that a machine is best at.

• It vibrates the head of the toothbrush, moving the bristles across my teeth much faster than I could ever hope to do (machines are better at small, repetitive motions).
• It automatically stops after the ADA-recommended 2 minutes, so I keep brushing until it stops (machines are better at judging time).
• It has a special beep (really a brief change in the vibrating speed) every 30 seconds that lets me know when to switch quadrants, so that I don’t over- or under-brush different areas (again with the time).
• It even has a quick 1- minute mode for days when I’m in a rush to make sure I get at least some minimal brushing in, since humans are even worse at judging time when they’re stressed (machines don’t get stressed about being late).

That leaves me, the human, to focus on the things that I’m better at, like slowly moving the toothbrush and getting that brush head into the back corners of my mouth. I get better brushing coverage, since I’m not distracted by trying to also keep up the repetitive brushing motions (humans aren’t very good at doing multiple things at once).

Cleaner teeth and a quick lesson in function allocation. I love it!

Proximity: page controls are lower and so closer to the page itself.

Error prevention: how many times have you stopped your music because you accidentally used your music tab to browse to a new web page? Now your Pandora tab can turn off the navigation bar to prevent this mistake.

Simplicity: the “navigation toolbar” is simpler because it contains only navigation functions. Browser tabs that don’t need the navigation toolbar can simplify the interface by turning it off.

Context: Web pages can add a toolbar at the top of the page, under the tabs, that makes it easier to access page functions. Since this toolbar is under the tab, it only shows when that tab is selected.

Grouping: the screenshots below illustrate how the current design has page functions (blue) mixed together with navigating to a new page (green) and application functions (yellow), but the new design has a cleaner organization and separation of these features.

There are some problems with consumer products that you don’t discover until people start using them. For example, I bought my iPad in April, but it wasn’t until June when I started wearing shorts that I realized that the metal back is really cold! However, this is a problem that the mobile phone industry has known about for years. It was one of the factors in moving from external to internal antennas; users like to rest a finger on the antenna while making calls, which greatly interferes with reception. It’s because skin is slightly conductive, which is exactly why Apple can use a capacitive touchscreen on the iPhone (instead of a resistive touchscreen, which requires pressure), and why you can’t use your iPhone with gloves on.

Using this external antenna was a carefully deliberated decision by Apple to achieve a particular look and shape. As a consulting company that works in product design, we are very aware that there are tradeoffs to be made between usability and design. In our own design process, we try to carefully balance aesthetics, fun, ease of use, and efficiency. You take into account how the product looks, how people react to it, how they use it, how many people will experience anticipated difficulties, and how severe these difficulties are. Not wanting to put a cold iPad on my lap? Not a big problem. Dropping a call because I’m holding my phone wrong? Huge! Apple is known for pursing elegant designs, which is why the front of the iPhone only has one button and their mice have none, but design should never come at the expense of basic functionality.

According to engadget, Apple’s suggestion is to hold the phone a different way. That’s ridiculous! It goes against one of our mottos in Human Factors and Usability, “fit the task to the person, not the person to the task.”  Or you can buy a case. This is why Apple has for the first time released their own iPhone cases, called bumpers, which insulate the band from your hand. I hear they’re selling like hotcakes. But I’ve never put a case on my iPod Touch, it’s too beautiful and thin, and certainly don’t want to cover up my lovely new iPhone. So now I have to choose between a phone with stunningly beautiful industrial design, or a phone hidden inside a case that can actually make calls. Completely ridiculous!

I’m sure that in a few weeks there will be dozens of companies offering their own cases and solutions, and hopefully some of them will be more elegant than the plastic bumpers from Apple. But shame on you, Apple, for giving design a bad name by creating a phone that forces you to choose between aesthetics and functionality! No one should have to make that choice.

It has several elements of a great website error message

• It does NOT blame the user
• It has a sense of humor
• It provides some suggestions for what to do next
• It wraps the error message in all of the standard parts of the website – logo, search box, links to the most popular articles, etc.

It could use a little improvement, but not much

• Explain what happened – most people don’t know what a 404 error message is, and “lost at sea” is a little vague, although most people will probably guess that the page doesn’t exist
• Point out in the text of the error message that the site has a search box, although again most people will probably find that on their own.

My favorite error message is still the one I saw on Sesame Street’s website [blog], although the iPhone lolcats app gets the most points for style [blog].

How do they get away without help? The game only has 6 things you can press on the homescreen initially (you unlock a few more as the game progresses), and none of those are menus, so it doesn’t take long to explore the entire interface. The game controls are simple and don’t need much explanation, and follow a classic game design strategy of giving you a new weapons and enemies gradually so that you learn their strengths and weaknesses. Contrast that with Wii Sports Resort and Mario Party which use elaborate tutorials to help you learn the games [blog]. It surely helps that the game has been around as a downloadable game for at least a year, which is a very long time compared to many apps. This gave the developers a chance to improve the original design, which many software applications these days don’t take the time to do [blog].

All in all, a fun game, and a very funny (un)help(ful) message. I’m off to watch the Plants vs. Zombies music video!

There are so many things that could have made this better: write with a marker, stick it to the middle of the screen, cover the screens with paper, perhaps even turn off the broken screens, if that’s not too much to ask? When something like this happens at home or in a small office everyone just knows to ignore it, but in a public setting a sign like that has to scream so that even idiots like me will notice it.

P.S. The full text of the lol is: After a busy day of orchestral rehearsals, the horn section takes a break

The corn husker is a device that was designed to do one thing and to do it really, really well. It was probably developed over decades, maybe even hundreds of years, as each successive generation of farmers tweaked the device to make it more efficient and easier to use, better designed to do exactly what needs to be done. These are two images of corn huskers from the National Heritage Center in New South Wales, Australia (1, 2), half a world away from North Carolina and yet very similar  to the ones we used this weekend. You place the dried corn into the chute and turn the handle. The spikes both push the kernels off the cob and pull the cob further down the chute. The cob then hits the bottom piece and the wheel pushes it sideways, up, and out of the device. I’d never seen this device before, but after using it to husk about 3 ears of corn I was a pro: you have to turn it clockwise so that it pulls the corn downward, don’t use your hand to push the cob down – it will catch the corn on its own after a few turns, and if you keep turning at the end the device will push the empty husk out all by itself. My 5-year-old niece was able to use the device unassisted, as long as I reminded her which direction to turn.

The software design process is very different from the process that produced that corn husker. The development cycles are faster, the developers aren’t always the users, and technology changes so quickly that software quickly becomes out of date and obsolete.  The best software is software that has gone through many, many revisions by the people that use it the most and know it best. Every software release makes the software more efficient and easier to use, better designed to do exactly what needs to be done. But many software developers focus on adding new features every release, without always taking the time to perfect the original, core features of the software, and so the software gradually gets more and more complex until it becomes very difficult to learn.

If every all software applications, electronic gadgets and consumer product were as well designed as this corn husker, we would all work more efficiently, and I’d be out of a job. Wouldn’t that be a great world to live in?

The Super Mario Party series of games has been a popular Nintendo party game for years, and it’s now on its 8th version. The game is oriented around dozens of mini-games, short games that last only a few minutes. Losing a single game isn’t a big deal because you play so many, and different people will be good at different mini games. You can also play a game in “practice” mode as many times as you like before starting the formal competition, which is important because in a 2-minute game you don’t have time to learn the controls. But the way the instructions are presented is terrible, so I found myself skipping the training and relying on my nieces and nephews to explain the rules. When I did really badly we’d go back to read the instructions and discover they’d been playing it wrong for weeks. Here’s why I disliked the instructions:

• Instructions are in a separate screen that you have to choose to read. No six-year-old (and few adults) will stop to read instructions before playing.
• There is a time gap between reading and using a move, so you are likely to forget it.
• All the moves are presented together, which makes them harder to learn than when you only learn one at a time.
• As an experienced user, watching someone read instructions is supremely boring.  I felt bad making the kids sit and watch while I read the instructions.

Wii Sports Resort has dozens of sports games, ranging from archery to skydiving to frisbee golf to swordplay, and each with several play variations (individual, team competitions, etc.). Like Mario Party, it’s a great party game because it has a variety of mini games to choose from. But it’s better because even though each game requires a different use of the controller, Nintendo has done an outstanding job of of integrating training into the game to helping newbies start playing.

Here’s what Wii Sports Resort did better than Mario Party 8:

• Practice mode allows you to learn the moves before starting a timed/scored/competitive game.
• Instructions are interspersed into the practice, with text overlaid on top of the screen as you try the move. It’s better for you because you can read the instructions while trying them out. It’s also better for everyone else because watching someone play a practice mode more entertaining than watching them read, and at least you can laugh when they swing their racket five times and still miss the ball.
• You are presented with one move at a time, and have time to practice before learning the next.
• Illustrations provide a basic level of instructions for those that can’t read, like young children.
• You use your own Mii (personalized avatar), and it remembers which Miis have been trained.
• Practice is always available if you want to repeat it.
• Games are used for sports that require extended training, such learning to steer your canoe by collecting ducklings and returning them to their mother, or learning how to aim your frisbee by popping balloons.

Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort are great games because swinging the controller is like swinging a bat or a racket or a golf club, which makes it lots of fun. But what interests me as a product designer is that Nintendo has done such a good job of desiging the games for ease of learning.  This is a key element for party games, to make sure that someone other than the game owner has fun. If you are designing instructional media, I highly recommend playing these games to see some examples of good instructional design. A game should be challenging because it’s a good game, not because it’s hard to learn the controls.

Zomm has created a keychain fob that’s a Bluetooth accessory for your phone. It pairs with your mobile phone, and then it beeps if it gets more than 50 yards away from your phone, to help you remember to take your phone with  you.  It also doubles as a personal alarm and way to talk to emergency personnel. The folks at CES also thought it was cool, they awarded it “The Best of Innovations” Award. This is a great example of design to avoid mistakes. For many of us it’s pretty difficult to leave home without keys because we have to lock the front door and start the car, but it’s much easier to forget your phone at home or on a table at a restaurant. With Zomm, as long as you have your keys, you’ll remember your phone.  If you keep your phone in your purse it can help you remember both, but if you forget your keys too you’re completely stuck.